picture: Me doing my sunday spanish cram session
To my left, I see a man in a cage, nostrils flared, both hands holding the cage which he calls his home, knawing at his encasement, our eyes meet. I’m mesmerized temporarily, before fear forces my eyes to the road. Probably a victim of Paco, a highly addictive cocaine by-product that transforms humans into the living dead. My ears are fixated on the sounds the caged man is making but my eyes go their own way and find refuge on the skeleton of a dog partialy sunk into the ground.
Picture: Hand made shack
I look to my right, I’m waved into a school, a boy runs up yells “Hola amigo. Que tal”, throws me a high five, his little sister, not wanting to the re-construct the academic sentence of her brother offers a high pitched “hola” and throws her little hand up for a high five. I bend down for a hug and a picture. She puts her fingers in her mouth and smiles the most beautiful smile I’ve ever seen. The sound of the knawing is still in my head and the audio contrasted with a little angle before my eyes throws my mind into a tailspin. Someone yells “milk time” and the kids run to get their milk. I forget the knawing.
Picture: Beautiful smile
We sit on the ground to film the post milk dance party, which lacked music but not spirit. Diego, a director of a production company in Villa 20 offered the group of angels his best shot of reggaeton so they had a beat to dance to. But the song died out quickly, when Diego realized he only knew 6 words to the popular kids dance song. But no beat was needed. They were all turned into the same internal radio station. They didn’t even notice the music stopped. The dance wagged on. Afterwards the kids wanted to watch themselves on the camera, they crawled all over me tying to get a glimpse of themselves on the cameras. Their soft cheeks push against my own unshaven cheeks. This makes me smile. They sit on my lap, jump on my back, lean on my shoulders and crawl on my head. This moment overwhelms me with joy. These children have nothing. They’ve been pushed to the margins by default. Being young children, economic wellbeing is out of their control. On the surface, their homes and streets look unfamiliar and unfriendly. Cages, hand made homes, and the curious stares of locals who quickly recognize the un-weathered face of someone with a home with 4 protective walls and temperature control. We look our age, they look their experiences. Yet, these children maintain their innocence and showcase their joy of the world for everyone to see.
Picture: Dancing in the slums
I leave the school, I find myself doing a dance of my own as I try to fend off the biggest swarm of mosquitoes I have ever seen in my life, I’m covered head to toe in bites. I pray that the biggest killer of mankind will stop their attack or at least call a cease fire while I try to make it to our next destination a few blocks away. The mosquitoes are too bad, we jump in a car and head back downtown.
Picture: Diego thinking of a new song to sing
I get home, my mind overwhelmed with new thoughts and experiences. I feel that poverty is almost impossible to understand. I saw life and death living next door to each other. People who have almost the same, with completely different life outcomes and perspectives. This is why poverty has yet to be properly defined. It is agreed upon that poverty has to do with deprivation or lack of well being, but beyond this point, there is much debate. There is something bigger at play here. There are new conclusions to be drawn.
Picture: Bedroom in one room shack
The next thing I know it's 8am and I'm jumping out of bed to meet with Maya, the director of the documentary. I’m late, I can’t find a bank machine that’s not broken. I have to try the subway for the first time. Surprisingly I figure it out pretty quickly. I also realize how much I love subways. I take a moment, buy a fruit from a homeless guy, and wait for my train. I arrive at the stop “constitution”. My gut talks to me. It says “put your hand in your pocket to protect your wallet”. I feel bad but I listen to the little guy. I hate when my faith in the human race fails me. I feel snobbish, thoughtless, and I also felt obvious about the fact I was protecting my wallet. How unnatural is it to walk around with one hand in your pocket. I sense people’s eye’s are on me after realizing I’m protecting something of value. I meet another little angel on my way upstairs to see Maya. She sees I have a bottle of water. She asks me for a sip. I say of course, and give her my bottle of water, she takes the littlest sip. I feel suspicious. I check my pocket. I feel horrible about thinking she was capable for that. She gives me my water back. I take a few steps away from her before I realized I should have given her the whole bottle. I turn around, tap her on her little shoulders and tell her she can have the whole thing, she said “no thanks, I just wanted a sip”. Strangely cute.
My hand in my pocket I run up a broken escalator to meet Maya. We get ready to board the subway which is taking us to a Hugo Chavez speech in a soccer stadium on the outskirts of the city center. I take my wallet out to get the 70 cents it’s going to cost me. Maya, yells at me and tells me to keep my wallet closer to my chest. She explains “I just watched two different guys get robbed within the last 30 minutes”. I felt less rude and thoughtless about protecting my wallet beforehand, but not better about second guessing the little angel.
After jumping the turnstiles, (not because I didn’t have 70 cents, but because everyone else was doing it and I would have been trampled if I stopped to try and pay), we squeezed into the subway. Then we squeezed some more. I didn’t need to hold onto anything because the human cargo was keeping me in one place. Every inch of my body was being pressed against by another human body with great force. Breathing was difficult and to make matters worse, others in the subway put hygiene on the back burner that day. I have never experienced a “squish” like that before. I decided to do a test between subway stops. I thought it might be interesting to see if I would remain standing if I allowed my legs to give out on me. Surely the pressure from the other humans pushing against me will keep me in my position. Test hypothesis was correct. However, I received strange looks as my change in body pressure started to make others feel uncomfortable, so I turned the power back on to my legs. I was having a blast, this subway ride was ranking near the top of my list in terms of “coolest subway experiences”, even beating out my “A train” subway experiences in New York. The train and I had some type of connection. The old beast realized I was having too much fun and decided to light itself on fire. Smoke started filling our car as we barreled down the dark subway tunnel. The smell or rubber filled my already compressed lungs. I hoped my companions who helped me so gracefully conduct my gravity experiment with my legs would be as helpful and cooperative when it came time to evacuate the train. No one other than people in our car realized there was fire so the train didn’t actually stop until the station at which time an official standing on the platform yelled out “get the %^&* out of the subway”, someone smashed some glass, someone else ran for the fire extinguisher. This was my first experience with the subway in BA. Incredible. My subway teammates, quickly made their way out the car and pushed me all the way up to the street to fresh air.
We made it to the Chavez rally and we got everything we bargained for. One of George bushes biggest critics moved a crowd of, I’m not sure how many, but a lot. The only food I had this day, a yogurt, about 13 hours before started to wear off and a slight fear of fainting kicked in as I noticed my body waving back and forth while I was trying to stand still. We took a cab for dinner at midnight, a common time to eat here then called it a day.
Picture: Hugo Chavez, President of Venezuela
Today, as I finally get to hang out with my girlfriend I find myself having hand to hand combat with my allergies, which so sneakily snuck up with my in my 27th year and seems to be getting worse as every day passes. My face stayed in a Kleenex all day. I felt Sam’s frustration as she tried to talk to me only to be rudely interrupted by a concert of my obnoxious sneezes that required that I find a well anchored tree to brace myself to endure the impact of the actual "ha chu" part . Needless to say, I’m not very good company today, and Sam quickly decided a tango class and milonga would be a nice substitute to a sneezing boyfriend. But my allergies have allowed me to write this post since they have forced me to stay inside today. I hope you enjoyed it.
To my angel sister, as a reminder of how far you’ve come.
Picture: Sam doing spanish in our house
Labels: Buenos Aires
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